About book Seizing The Enigma: The Race To Break The German U-boat Codes, 1939-1943 (2001)
'Seizing the Enigma' was an exceptionally good read. I had receiving the book as a gift and I was exciting to learn more about the subject of the Enigma after having recently watched 'The Imitation Game'. Seizing the Enigma does a lot to fill in the gaps left in such a movie. Solving the messages send by the Germans was a huge collaborative effort that included achievements by mathematicians, linguists, and cryptologists, etc. as well as men at sea.As the book explains, the key to success for England during WWII was the war in the Atlantic. Without the raw materials and supplies provided by the US, the British would have been in even worse shape. In order to keep the German U-boats from sinking so many ships, the Allies needed to be able to read messages sent to/from the German U-boats so that they could steer clear of the 'wolf packs' of enemy submarines.Prior to reading this book, I did not have a great appreciation or understanding of all that took place in order to be able to crack the code on reading many of the Enigma-enciphered messages. Men and women labored day and night to find a way to solve the "unsolvable". There were daring exploits at sea in which men risked their lives to capture U-boats and German weather ships to get their hands on the cipher books, the Enigma machine, as well as its rotors and settings. I was awestruck by the sheer luck (if you wish to call it that) of how the Allies (especially the British) had so many pieces of the puzzle o come into their possession. From being given replica Enigma machines (courtesy of the Poles) to seizing the rotors that a captured German sailor forgot to throw overboard to the Germans believing that the Allies 'happened' to find so many of their ships through what they thought was simply direction finding, so many things lined up to help the Allies. It was by no means easy and there were a lot of setbacks, as depicted in the book.I enjoyed reading 'Seizing the Enigma' and so will anyone else who wants to know more about the subject. The author went to great lengths to provide as much detail as possible. He explained technically how the Enigma machine worked as well as the other equipment described in the book. I appreciated his efforts to get 'into the weeds' on how everything worked.It is a cautionary tale in the sense that no one should believe their message systems are 'unbreakable'. Governments (or individuals) can never rest on their laurels and believe that they have done enough to protect what is valuable to them. I also see the book as a testament to the determination of those men and women. They never gave up even though it should have taken them, mathematically, millions of years to solve the Enigma messages. I applaud their dedication and sacrifice.
worth it. Covers raiding German ships and stealing keys and enigma machine parts as well as the genious breakthroughs in codebreaking tedious codebreaking back at Bletchley Park (B.P.).This delivers many interesting computer security tidbits. For example, the codebreakers at B.P. found that some messages were sent out both under the enigma cipher and under a more easily breakable maritime cipher. The plaintext that resulted from the maritime cipher helped them derive the keys for the enigma. At times, they wanted to trigger the transmission of these doubled up messages (called kisses at B.P.) so they would have the British navy do things like lay mines that they knew would trigger the doubled transmissions.Will remind everyone of Cryptonomicon.
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Better than most books on Bletchley Park and the breaking of the German codes during WWII, this book focuses almost exclusively on the breaking of the naval and U-Boat codes. It refutes the movie "U-571," in which a U.S. operation captures German code books, with the truth that it was many valent British sailors who captured these books - - at times, at the expense of their lives. It's also much more accurate about BP, the bombes and the quest to break the Enigma code than is the current movie "The Imitation Game."
—Jim McIntosh
